Today’s Snapshot: Bearing Witness

(click pic to go big)

I have this compulsion to visit scenes of tragedies, not from some sense of morbid curiosity as for a need to represent, to observe. I stand at the scenes of crimes such as this and try to fathom the randomness. I try to manage the anger. I fail.

Near this memorial to 17-year-old Lily Burk is where she was abducted July 24. For my lack of a match the candles are all out — not because of neglect but because of the groundskeepers’ leaf blowers and the law school’s sprinklers that morning, said a security guard who arrived and carefully repositioned the placard as I stood there.

“I didn’t want it to get wet,” he said, and I sensed there was some solace found in protecting her memory.